ASI, implementers of the Ghana Commercialisation of Rice Project (G-CORP), is reaching out to rice farmers in the Volta and Northern regions to help them increase the yield and quality of locally produced rice. The move is to significantly reduce Ghana’s rising rice importation, and increase the productivity and incomes of 10,000 small-scale rice farmers in the two regions by strengthening the relationship between smallholder farmers and a lead or anchor investor with funding from AGRA.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic, the ASI Country Representative to Ghana, Mr Kwesi Korboe, said the project was targeting about 10,000 farmers during the three-year project.
According to Mr Korboe, G-CORP worked with the Global Agricultural Development Company (GADCO) to assist about 500 farmers producing under rain-fed conditions in the Volta Region. The focus of the project is to facilitate linkage between smallholders and GADCO under the Copa Connect Program through training and capacity building.
Copa Connect
Copa Connect is a core initiative of GADCO, central to the company’s business strategy. Copa Connect’s business model is based (in part) on using its market power and position to provide smallholders with affordable agricultural inputs and services in exchange for delivery of high quality paddy to feed its mill and supply multiple market channels with polished rice. In addition, Copa Connect has a pricing model which provides a premium for quality while providing market channels for multiple grades and by-products.
Mr Korboe said about 500 of the farmers had so far benefitted from various aspects of the programme.
“GADCO supports the project with the necessary skills, resources and incentives to ensure delivery of high quality inputs (seed, fertiliser and crop protection), as well as extension and product aggregation services either directly or through other value chain actors e.g. nucleus farmers, aggregators to large numbers of smallholder farmers in the Volta Regions,” Mr Korboe stated.
Expectation
G-CORP expects to achieve the increase sales of smallholder paddy rice to commercial plantation rice mills through aggregators, reduced harvest and post-harvest losses of rice and reduced transaction costs through the use of Information and Communications Technology.
He said ASI’s partnership with AGRA had allowed the Copa Connect programme to reshape the relationship with smallholders in rice production, and added that AGRA had provided valuable support and advice to enable the Copa Connect programme to train farmers in modern techniques and the vitally important role of linking smallholders to Ghana's high growth packaged rice market, thus strengthening incomes and boosting domestic food security.
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